Chris Mueller is a Ph.D. in Computer
Science with a passion for understanding and decoding personal genomics as it applies to
customized care. As technology makes a personalized approach increasingly possible, Chris
demonstrates the vast amount of data that is generated by untangling just a single
diseased genome, and challenges us to consider the innovation needed to effectively
process this huge amount of information.

Trailer for the finished documentary
"Preventing Genocide", based on the book by Dr. David Hamburg. The film features
interviews with prominent world leaders such as Kofi Annan and Desmond Tutu. Directed by
Eric Hamburg, cinematography and editing by Rick English. The full documentary can be seen
at http://lib.stanford.edu/pg

New gene variants present
opportunities in nutrigenomics

A new study uncovers 11 gene variants associated with three blood lipids measured to
determine cardiovascular disease risk: low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol,
high-density lipoprotein (HDL) and triglycerides. The discovery opens up new opportunities
for nutrigenomics researchers looking for links between diet and genetics that will
optimize health and lower chronic disease risk. "Practically all genes related to
lipid levels in the bloodstream respond to changes in the diet," says Jose M.
Ordovas, PhD, one of five senior authors of the study and director of the Nutrition and
Genomics Laboratory at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at
Tufts University (USDA HNRCA). "With this new knowledge, we are closer to identifying
precise dietary recommendations for people at risk for cardiovascular disease. For
instance, carriers of a certain variant gene could reduce their risk of disease with a
low-cholesterol diet, carriers of another variant gene may benefit from the Mediterranean
diet, while a high-fiber diet may be the healthiest option for carriers of yet another
variant gene." In addition to the 11 new genes, the authors' findings strengthen the
association of 19 previously identified genes with LDL and HDL cholesterol and
triglycerides. Ordovas collaborated with 60 authors, led by corresponding author Sekar
Kathiresan, MD, of Massachusetts General Hospital, for the study published December 7
online in Nature Genetics December 7. The study is a meta-analysis of over 20,000 subjects
in genome-wide association studies of humans in the United States and Europe with The
Framingham Heart Study accounting for the largest number of samples.

Scientists have known for decades that genes called transposons can jump around the genome
in a cell. This jumping can be dangerous, especially when it arises in cells that produce
eggs and sperm. Although nature developed a mechanism to quash this genetic scrambling,
how it works has remained a mystery. Now scientists have identified a key protein that
suppresses jumping genes in mouse sperm and found that the protein is vital to sperm
formation.

Inborn differences may help explain why trauma gives some people bad memories and others
the nightmare of post-traumatic stress. Scientists in Germany and the United States have
reported evidence linking genes to anxious behavior. The findings appear in the August
issue of Behavioral Neuroscience, published by the American Psychological Association.

The first genome-wide search for genes governing social behavior has found that even the
simplest social creatures -- the amoebae Dictyostelium discoideum -- have more than 100
genes that help regulate cooperative behavior. The study by scientists at Rice University
and Baylor College of Medicine was published online today by Nature. It marks one of the
first large-scale attempts to combine evolutionary biology with genomics in a systematic
search for genes tied to social behavior.

Researchers at McGill University have discovered a way to boost an organism's natural
anti-virus defenses, effectively making its cells immune to influenza and other viruses.
Their results are to be published Feb. 13 in the journal Nature.

Scientists at Penn State have shed light on some of the processes that regulate genes and
on the evolution of the DNA regions that regulate genes. The team focused on regulatory
regions that, when bound to a certain protein, are thought to turn on genes that play an
important role in the development of red blood cells. The research results could help in
the development of drugs to treat sickle-cell anemia and other blood disorders.

A team led by Craig Pikaard, Ph.D., WUSTL professor of biology in arts and sciences, has
made a breakthrough in understanding the phenomenon of nucleolar dominance, the silencing
of an entire parental set of ribosomal RNA genes in a hybrid plant or animal. Since the
machinery involved in nucleolar dominance is some of the same machinery that can go
haywire in diseases such as cancer, Pikaard and his collaborators' research may have
important implications for applied medical research.

To decipher how cancer develops, Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center investigators say
researchers must take a closer look at the packaging. Specifically, their findings in the
December 2, 2008, issue of PLoS Biology point to the three dimensional chromatin packaging
around genes formed by tight, rosette-like loops of Polycomb group proteins (PcG). The
chromatin packaging, a complex combination of DNA and proteins that compress DNA to fit
inside cells, provides a repressive hub that keeps genes in a low expression state.
We think the polycomb proteins combine with abnormal DNA methylation of genes to
deactivate tumor suppressor genes and lock cancer cells in a primitive state, says
Stephen B. Baylin, M.D., Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Professor of Oncology and senior author.
Prior to this discovery, investigators studying cancer genes, looked at gene silencing as
a linear process across the DNA, as if genes were flat, one dimensional objects. Research
did not take into account the way genes are packaged.